Tuesday, June 14, 2011

I love to scrapbook, but I am behind. Dreadfully behind. So behind that it feels as though I have a giant snowball rolling along behind me that is going to crush me soon. In fact, I'm not quite sure I still can say that "I love to scrapbook" but rather that I love the idea of scrapbooking. Truth be told, the idea of catching up on all my scrapbooking is overwhelming and daunting! I have the supplies, I have oodles of digital pictures, but I do not have the time!

Enter Project Life by Becky Higgins. Basically it is scrapbooking made simple--putting the focus on the pictures rather than on all the finicky crafting supplies. You can do it in a picture a day format (the 365 projects a lot of people do) or in your own format.

I first heard about Project Life on Erin's blog: Sunny Side Up. Erin has three children and manages to find time to scrapbook using a modified version of Project Life--all of a sudden this scrapbook thing started to seem more doable...so I ordered a Project Life kit. Um, that was over a year ago...and I haven't used it yet. *sigh* THEN, for some crazy reason, I ordered a second kit a couple of months ago. I'm not really sure why because now I have TWO unopened Project Life kits. At least they're different colors...

Then--THEN--I saw a video Becky Higgins posted on her Facebook page. That video is what made me realize I can love scrapbooking again. I can keep up with my pictures and not be years and years behind. I can scrapbook and use doo-dads...or not. It is totally up to me!

I am NOT a digital scrapbooker. Not. However, even I was able to make a digital yearbook (easily!!) for my family and it is beautiful. Seriously, BEAUTIFUL. Now I can make digital yearbooks for each year and save my paper scrapbooking for major family vacations or our Christmas album and not worry about scrapping every family moment.

Look at that beautiful book! I was able to customize pretty much anything I wanted on it--and could have done even more than I did. LOVE it.

(Don't mind my finger...just covering up our last name...) The printing in this book is so lovely. Everything is crisp and the pages have a great weight to them.

Here is the month of January, complete with journaling! I thought it would be difficult to select just seven pictures, but it really wasn't...by the end of this book I really felt as though this gave an excellent picture of our year. I did these monthly pages pretty much using the existing templates, but you can toss the templates and just cover the pages with pictures if that is your choice.

In September we went to Disneyland--here is the regular monthly layout for September. This was the first month where I felt as though I couldn't summarize our month in just seven pictures...so I added some extra pages!

Here are the Disneyland pages I added right after the September monthly pages. I still plan to do another traditional paper scrapbook for our trip, but I like seeing the trip represented in this yearbook, too.

I covered up the last page that was in the album with more of our own pictures--this album is so easy to customize!

Even the back cover has a full color picture of my babies (yes, they're tossing leaves into the air)!

And of course the title is on the spine of the book--I'm already looking forward to having a whole row of these yearbooks lined up on our shelf.

This yearbook is called "Digital Project Life" on Becky Higgins' site and Facebook page. You can make an entire book and preview it before you pay anything--this is what I did...however I loved the end result so much that I ordered three of them. One for each of my children and one for me to keep.

I shared the finished book with my children last night as they were finishing their dinner--I treated it like storytime. It was so fun to see their faces light up as the pictures sparked various memories. This is something that NEVER happened with the digital pictures all closed up in my computer and the bins and bins of unused scrapbooking supplies. It feels SO GOOD to have my family enjoying these memories because that is what scrapbooking truly is about--it isn't about cutting and pasting and fancy fonts.

4 comments:

Very nice, I did one similar but on a smaller scale through Shutterfly for a trip we did to Florida for my husbands grandfathers 90th birthday. The kids do love to look back at the pictures and relive the moments. Kudos to you for taking the time to complete it!

Love it! I am doing the binder version of Project Life this year....I'm really enjoying it but am finding that getting to the store to print the pictures is where I'm falling behind. The more I see the digital version and how beautiful it is...the more I think that's the route I will take next year. Thanks for sharing!!

Oh it turned out so beautiful!!! I love it! And you are so right about your kids actually enjoying the book. That is my favorite part too - seeing my girls light up when they look at their albums. I love the idea of a "family yearbook" for each year. And doesn't it feel so great to have the year scrapbooked!!? So cool. Thanks so much for mentioning me! I LOVE your book. Almost as much as I LOVE that picture of your little ones tossing leaves at the end of it. :)

I could have written this!! I started (as in ultrasound pics) my son's album and he is 2! I hate that I haven't done it. I follow Erin's blog too and I am intrigued by Project Life but haven't made the move just yet. Nice to read your take on it.

About Me

I'm a SAHM to a seven year old girl and a five year old boy. I spend my time balancing my daughter's need for fluff and frills and my son's need for dump trucks. Sometimes I mix things up and give him the fluff and frills. He's still little...he doesn't mind a hairbow or two now and then.